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As they have in the past, the show’s organizers have invited distinguished figures from the craft field to serve as jury. The roster is impressive: Jill Heppenheimer, co-owner of the Santa Fe Weaving Gallery and creator and director of the Design with Heart Fiber Conference project (1996-2006); Jane Adlin, associate curator in the Department of 19th Century, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Jack Larimore, renowned craftsman in wood and professor at the
Show Manager Nancy O’Meara says that this year’s show features around forty first-time exhibitors. Jewelry and ceramics are the two largest categories, as far as applicants and number of artists in the show go. More than fifteen hundred craft artists applied. Among the criteria for craft artists seeking to participate in the show is the following: “Works should be made by hand or with the use of appropriate tools, showing imagination and the mark of the craftsperson’s individuality.” At every turn, the craft art on view this year makes manifest these prerequisites. The precious and semiprecious jewelry sections abound in fine work from across the country. Carla Reiter, from Evanston, Illinois, presents some of her latest knitted metal pieces that incorporate silver, gold, copper, and diamonds. “In my jewelry, I strive to blend an almost primitive handmade feeling with a refined sense of design,” Reiter says.
Juror Jill Heppenheimer notes how the artists in the show explore “quintessentially American design aesthetics, as well as global design voices.” A great example of this can be found in the work of Korean-born Kiwon Wang. Her jewelry is based on the theme of “East meets West,” which she describes as “the meeting and the interplay between materials and forms, methods, techniques, and literature.” Based in New York City, Wang creates ornaments that employ “contrast, tension, absence, and presence.” Materials include fourteen karat gold, sterling silver, pearls, semiprecious stones, and newspaper. Elise Winters likes to tease the imagination with her ornaments. “If you look at one of my brooches and find yourself thinking about budding plants or reflections off a rippling stream,” says the Haworth, New Jersey, artist, “then I have done my job.” Her jewelry and sculpture feature a technique she refers to as “crazed acrylic.” It is a combination of polymer clay and acrylic paints.
“Windows, layering and texture are metaphors for the mystery and richness of personalities,” says jewelry artist Debra Karash. Based in Rockford, Illinois, Karash draws inspiration from natural textures, fiber, stone, and mixed media paintings and sculpture. “Surface, color and texture are as important to my work as are the forms themselves,” she explains.
Randall Darwall, from Bass River, Massachusetts, is a studio clothmaker who designs as he works. “I particularly like the unpredictable potential that only the handweaver is free to explore in process,” he says. He will use many different kinds of silk yarns “to make the color glow, to create depth and to record the motion of weaving.” Velarde, New Mexico, textile artist Juanita Girardin creates distinctive handwoven fabrics that employ unusual graphic imagery and color. In her recent work she puts silk and wool through various processes, including tearing, stitching, pleating, and slashing. The result is one-of-a-kind and limited edition garments.
at the Philadelphia show four times. Her new book, Mixed Media Collage, comes out this autumn. At her studio in McLean, Virginia, paper artist Jiyoung Chung practices joomchi, a traditional Korean method of creating texture and imagery using handmade paper. A former artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and Minnesota Center for Books Arts, Chung currently has a solo show at Baylor University’s Martin Museum of Art. Kathleen Dustin is a recognized master of colored polymer clay. The artist, who lives in Contoocook, New Hampshire, uses this medium to create remarkable evening bags. When asked why she makes purses and not figurines or sculptures, Dustin replies that while the latter collect dust, the former are functional. “You are supposed to touch them, caress them and examine them,” she explains.
The ceramic artists, too, will elicit admiration. Born in Norway, Elisabeth Maurland lives and works in Decorah, Iowa, creating wheel-thrown, functional stoneware pottery decorated with sgraffito and wax-resist
Ed Branson from Ashfield, Massachusetts, is one of the standout glassblowers displaying his work in the Philadelphia show. Working in opaque, transparent, ladled or blown glass, he achieves a fanciful quality in many of his one-of-a-kind vessels. He explores organic, fluid shapes and unusual colors. “I’m not trying to create new forms and colors as much as I’m trying to discover them,” he explains. Another glass artist to look out for is Nancy Nicholson from Brooklyn, New York. In her cityscape stained glass panels, Nicholson says, she harks back to the arts and crafts movement of the late 1800s “when a perfect union between art and craft existed.” She considers herself a painter, “only my ‘canvas’ is the illuminated sky and my ‘paints’ are the glass and lead.”
Among the notable woodworkers in the show are Denise Nielsen and George Worthington from Saugerties, New
Scanning the entire panoply of craft work in the show, there is a great deal to admire. In no particular order, keep an eye out for the witty figurative and mixed media sculpture of Laura Balombini; the eye-catching mosaic jewelry of Mary Kanda; the handpainted miniatures of Christina Goodman; the custom footwear and accessories of Barbara and Rob Mathews; the stream-lined metal creations of Robert Farrell; and the stunning jewelry of Eduardo Rubio-Azarte.
Marianne Aav, director of the Design Museum in Helsinki, helped curate the Finnish section. Among the artists of note are Elina Saari and Sirkka Kononen. Saari, who has spent time in England, creates bold felted hats, functional yet very unusual, which she sells at the Helsinki market. Kononen designs elaborate patterns for knitted sweaters, which are stunning in terms of color selection and design. She uses hand-dyed yarn with elaborate tone variations. A majority of Finnish artists in the show are from the Helsinki area, but a group of them live in Fiskars, a small village west of Helsinki that used to be a factory town (known for its scissors). Today, the factory buildings are used for exhibitions and artists occupy the workers’ houses— the Scandinavian version of the “creative economy.”
This craft show and its organizers have come a long way in three decades. Chair of the Craft Show, Catherine Altman remembers being recruited to help check coats at the first preview party at the Philadelphia Museum; she went on to become a regular volunteer. “I was in awe then, as I continue to be now,” she says, “of the extraordinary creative energy that the craft artists exhibit each year.” That is an awe all visitors are bound to share.
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The
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Published in Ornament Magazine, Volume 30,
No.1, 2006. |
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